I tried to look through the FAQ and recent posts, but could find anything on the subject.

What has caused the economic inequality between Northern Europe (UK, France, Germany) and Southern Europe (Spain, Greece, Italy etc)? Has this economic disparity existed for a long time? I am wondering about the historical background of the recent Eurozone crisis. I understand that you cannot cover things later than 1995.

I'm reading some biographies on Bach (1685 - 1750) and while they do a great job relaying his musical development and his travels, they do a very poor job describing what life was like in general in the places in which he lived (e.g. Cothen, Weimar and Leipzig).

From what I gather, he lived in an area called the Electorate of Saxony which was part of the Holy Roman Empire. This is post-Thirty Years War and there are a few mentions of the region being in pretty rough shape. But any specifics on what that means are left out.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression it was kind of a transitional period for that part of Europe; not the Middle Ages, but not quite the Age of Enlightenment either.

Are there any books that may offer more detail about the environment in which Bach lived?

Reading about Al-Azhar University, whose page says it dates back to the tenth century, making it older than Bologna. Why is it not counted as a university?

I was reading a book, and saw that James the Wisest Fool in Christendom was known as James I (King of England), and yet James VI (King of Scotland).

How did that happen? Shouldn't he actually be the Sixth (or First) of his house?

Because it's in every submarine movie. The tension mounts as the frozen crew tracked the incoming missile on the sonar.

Edit: For that matter has a submarine, under its own control, gone too deep and had the pressure crush the hull?

I'm aware that not all regiments and units used the same colors ... but it seems that it was used quite a bit especially in the infantries.

So .. wasn't this a huge problem? Why would someone think it is a good idea to be wearing the same colors as the enemy on the battlefield? How else could you tell who was friend and who was enemy?

Why not say .. "Ok .. we will wear orange, then."

By class starting with kings. During the time of Julius Caesar.

Hello, Historians! I'm currently teaching an English class in which we incorporate a lot of history. Right now we're researching the case of Emmett Till but I can only seem to find resources from black papers of the time. Was this issue not covered very much in the white press, or is this a case of those articles being buried under what we now see as the "right side of history"?

I want my students to be able to compare the coverage the case received when presented for different audiences and if there really is very little in the white press I want them to consider the implications of that.

Any help is appreciated!

I have been wondering if there's any evidence supporting that, in historic men were far stronger than modern men. Like for example, in the Ancient Rome or the Ancient Greek. When I see Game of Thrones for example, the idea is that all men more or less were really stronger ones. Is this a fallacy?

In sociology today we were talking about how in the early 1900's, Italians were discriminated against just like other minority groups. But along the line they became clumped in with "white people". She never gave the reason though.

It's a popular trope in media (think Red Wedding) but are there actually any events like this?

I'm not sure how to google this. I know about Battle of Copenhagen but don't know enough about Dutch and Britain relations.

I'm curious about a few things. When we picture ancient Rome, we tend to picture classical Rome, the late republic to the empire at it's height. Did Europeans in the middle ages picture late ancient Rome? How did they picture people dressing, how aware where they about how the Roman economy worked did they imagine it close to their own?

It's certainly true that immediately after that decision the dominos began to fall - the Panic of 1857, Bloody Kansas, the raid on Harper's Ferry, the Texas Troubles. The Buchanan Presidency must have been a time of disorientingly bad news.

This seems logical, as the essence of slavery seems (to me) to have been the denial of legal recourse to the enslaved, and the Dred Scott decision made that permanent and unfixable by any legal means. From that point on no problem between a slave and a free person could be legally addressed, which seems to me to lead directly to a society boiling over without any vent. Naturally, it's going to burst out everywhere.

However, it's rare to read anything from the time that mentions Dred Scott! For example, I'm reading the collection of period publications and writings called The Civil War: The First Year Told By Those Who Lived It (excellent book, BTW), and the only person who mentions the decision.....is James Buchanan!

(Who you would think would be the last person to bring it up, but he never saw it as him improperly influencing a Supreme Court justice. He saw it as the application of his Solomon-like wisdom to solve a problem forever and he could never see why it didn't settle the question.)

Were the people of the day right to dismiss Dred Scott as irrelevant, or was the true importance of the decision obscured at the time?

What I mean is, would packs of wolves, lions etc a big problem for humans when we could only fight with spears, or did we have the easy upper hand?

Seems strange quite how immediately most of what I hear in lectures is dismissed.